ANTHROPOCENTRISM is (/ˌænθroʊpoʊˈsɛntrɪzəm/ ; from Greek
Ancient GreekAncient Greek : ἄνθρωπος, ánthrōpos, "human being"; and
Ancient GreekAncient Greek : κέντρον, kéntron, "center") is the belief that
human beings are the most significant entity of the universe .
Anthropocentrism interprets or regards the world in terms of human
values and experiences. The term can be used interchangeably with
HUMANOCENTRISM, and some refer to the concept as HUMAN SUPREMACY or
HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM.
Anthropocentrism is considered to be profoundly
embedded in many modern human cultures and conscious acts. It is a
major concept in the field of environmental ethics and environmental
philosophy , where it is often considered to be the root cause of
problems created by human action within the ecosphere .

However, many proponents of anthropocentrism state that this is not
necessarily the case: they argue that a sound long-term view
acknowledges that a healthy, sustainable environment is necessary for
humans and that the real issue is shallow anthropocentrism.

Some proponents of human exceptionalism point to evidence of unusual
rapid evolution of the brain and the emergence of exceptional
aptitudes . As one commentator put it, "Over the course of human
history , we have been successful in cultivating our faculties,
shaping our development, and impacting upon the wider world in a
deliberate fashion, quite distinct from evolutionary processes ."

ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Anthropocentrism, also known as homocentricism or human supremacism ,
has been posited by some environmentalists , in such books as
Confessions of an Eco-Warrior by
Dave Foreman and Green Rage by
Christopher Manes, as the underlying (if unstated) reason why humanity
dominates and sees the need to "develop" most of the Earth.
Anthropocentrism is believed by some to be the central problematic
concept in environmental philosophy, where it is used to draw
attention claims of a systematic bias in traditional Western attitudes
to the non-human world.
Val Plumwood has argued that
anthropocentrism plays an analogous role in green theory to
androcentrism in feminist theory and ethnocentrism in anti-racist
theory. Plumwood calls human-centredness "anthrocentrism" to emphasise
this parallel.

One of the first extended philosophical essays addressing
environmental ethics,
John Passmore 's Man's Responsibility for Nature
has been criticised by defenders of deep ecology because of its
anthropocentrism, often claimed to be constitutive of traditional
Western moral thought. Indeed, defenders of anthropocentrism
concerned with the ecological crisis contend that the maintenance of a
healthy, sustainable environment is necessary for human well-being as
opposed to for its own sake. The problem with a "shallow" viewpoint is
not that it is human-centred but that according to William Grey:
"What's wrong with shallow views is not their concern about the
well-being of humans, but that they do not really consider enough in
what that well-being consists. According to this view, we need to
develop an enriched, fortified anthropocentric notion of human
interest to replace the dominant short-term, sectional and
self-regarding conception." In turn, Plumwood in Environmental
Culture: The
EcologicalEcological Crisis of Reason argued that Grey's
anthropocentrism is inadequate.

It is important to take note that many devoted environmentalists
encompass a somewhat anthropocentric-based philosophical view
supporting the fact that they will argue in favor of saving the
environment for the sake of human populations. Grey writes: "We should
be concerned to promote a rich, diverse, and vibrant biosphere. Human
flourishing may certainly be included as a legitimate part of such a
flourishing." Such a concern for human flourishing amidst the
flourishing of life as a whole, however, is said to be
indistinguishible from that of deep ecology and biocentrism , which
has been proposed as both an antithesis of anthropocentrism. and as a
generalised form of anthropocentrism.

JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION

MaimonidesMaimonides , a scholar of the
TorahTorah who lived in the 12th century AD,
was noted for being decidedly anti-anthropocentric.
MaimonidesMaimonides called
man "a mere 'drop of the bucket" and "not 'the axle of the world'".
He also claimed that anthropocentric thinking is what causes humans to
think that evil things exist in nature. According to Rabbi Norman
Lamm ,
MaimonidesMaimonides "thus deflate man's extravagant notions of his own
importance and urge us to abandon these illusions."

In the 1985 CBC series "A Planet For the Taking", Dr. David Suzuki
explored the
Old TestamentOld Testament roots of anthropocentrism and how it shaped
our view of non-human animals. Some Christian proponents of
anthropocentrism base their belief on the Bible, such as the verse
1:26 in the
Book of GenesisBook of Genesis :

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

The use of the word "dominion" in the Genesis is controversial. Many
Biblical scholars, especially
Roman CatholicRoman Catholic and other non-Protestant
Christians, consider this to be a flawed translation of a word meaning
"stewardship ", which would indicate that mankind should take care of
the earth and its various forms of life.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Anthropocentrism is the grounding for some naturalistic concepts of
human rights . Defenders of anthropocentrism argue that it is the
necessary fundamental premise to defend universal human rights , since
what matters morally is simply being human. For example, noted
philosopher
Mortimer J. Adler wrote, "Those who oppose injurious
discrimination on the moral ground that all human beings, being equal
in their humanity, should be treated equally in all those respects
that concern their common humanity, would have no solid basis in fact
to support their normative principle." Adler is stating here, that
denying what is now called human exceptionalism could lead to tyranny,
writing that if we ever came to believe that humans do not possess a
unique moral status, the intellectual foundation of our liberties
collapses: "Why, then, should not groups of superior men be able to
justify their enslavement, exploitation, or even genocide of inferior
human groups on factual and moral grounds akin to those we now rely on
to justify our treatment of the animals we harness as beasts of
burden, that we butcher for food and clothing, or that we destroy as
disease-bearing pests or as dangerous predators?"

Author and anthropocentrism defender
Wesley J. Smith from the
Discovery InstituteDiscovery Institute has written that human exceptionalism is what
gives rise to human duties to each other, the natural world, and to
treat animals humanely. Writing in A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy, a
critique of animal rights ideology, "Because we are unquestionably a
unique species--the only species capable of even contemplating ethical
issues and assuming responsibilities--we uniquely are capable of
apprehending the difference between right and wrong, good and evil,
proper and improper conduct toward animals. Or to put it more
succinctly if being human isn't what requires us to treat animals
humanely, what in the world does?"

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

In cognitive psychology , anthropocentric thinking can be defined as
"the tendency to reason about unfamiliar biological species or
processes by analogy to humans". Reasoning by analogy is an
attractive thinking strategy, and it can be tempting to apply our own
experience of being human to other biological systems. For example,
because death is commonly felt to be undesirable, it may be tempting
to form the misconception that death at a cellular level or elsewhere
in nature is similarly undesirable (whereas in reality programmed cell
death is an essential physiological phenomenon, and ecosystems also
rely on death). Conversely, anthropocentric thinking can also lead
people to underattribute human characteristics to other organisms. For
instance, it may be tempting to wrongly assume that an animal that is
very different from humans, such as an insect, will not share
particular biological characteristics, such as reproduction or blood
circulation.

Anthropocentric thinking has predominantly been studied in young
children (mostly up to the age of 10) by developmental psychologists
interested in its relevance to biology education . Although relatively
little is known about its persistence at a later age, evidence exists
that this pattern of human exceptionalist thinking can continue
through young adulthood, even among students who have been
increasingly educated in biology.

The notion that anthropocentric thinking is an innate human
characteristic has been challenged by study of American children
raised in urban environments, among whom it appears to emerge between
the ages of 3 and 5 years as an acquired perspective. Children's
recourse to anthropocentric thinking seems to vary with experience and
cultural assumptions about the place of humans in the natural world.
Children raised in rural environments appear to use it less than their
urban counterparts because of their greater familiarity with different
species of animals and plants. Studies involving children from some
of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have found little use of
anthropocentric thinking. Study of children among the Wichí people
in South America showed a tendency to think of living organisms in
terms of their taxonomic or perceived similarities , ecological
considerations, and animistic traditions, resulting in a much less
anthropocentric view of the natural world than is experienced by many
children in Western societies.

IN POPULAR CULTURE

This article NEEDS ATTENTION FROM AN EXPERT IN WIKIPROJECT. The
specific problem is: ANALYSIS OF GLOBAL FICTION AND SCIENCE FICTION
WITHOUT NEITHER SOURCE NOR EXAMPLES. NEEDS AN EXPERT OF SCIENCE
FICTION STUDIES . WikiProject WikiProject may be able to help recruit
an expert. (November 2016)

In fiction from all eras and societies, there is fiction treating as
normal the actions of humans to ride, eat, milk, and otherwise treat
animals as separate species. There are occasional exceptions, such as
talking animals , but they are generally treated as exceptions, as
aberrations to the rule distinguishing people from animals.

In science fiction , humanocentrism is the idea that humans, as both
beings and as a species, are the superior sentients . Essentially the
equivalent of racial supremacy on a galactic scale, it entails
intolerant discrimination against sentient non-humans , much like race
supremacists discriminate against those not of their race. A prime
example of this concept is utilized as a story element for the Mass
Effect series. After humanity's first contact results in a brief war,
many humans in the series develop suspicious or even hostile attitudes
towards the game's various alien races. By the time of the first game,
which takes place several decades after the war, many humans still
retain such sentiments in addition to forming 'pro-human'
organizations.

This idea is countered by anti-humanism . At times, this ideal also
includes fear of and superiority over strong AIs and cyborgs ,
downplaying the ideas of integration , cybernetic revolts , machine
rule and Tilden\'s Laws of Robotics .

Mark TwainMark Twain mocked the belief in human supremacy in Letters from the
Earth (written c. 1909, published 1962).

The 2012 documentary The Superior Human? systematically analyzes
anthropocentrism and concludes that value is fundamentally an opinion,
and since life forms naturally value their own traits, most humans are
misled to believe that they are actually more valuable than other
species. This natural bias, according to the film, combined with a
received sense of comfort and an excuse for exploitation of non-humans
cause anthropocentrism to remain in society.